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I just got a mailing from a well known company who was attempting to solicit my business, and no, I won’t embarrass them by revealing their identity.

Here’s a direct quote from their marketing piece:

“According to a recent independent study, our search engine converts prospects to customers at a rate that is 57% higher than Google and 48% higher than Yahoo”

After reading this, my immediate response was, “Are you kidding me”?!

So let me ask you, do you have any ideas on why this is such an insane statement, and why it caused me to react the way I did?

For starters, more and more companies are using this “independent study” garbage.

In most cases, I’d be willing to be that there was no independent study done at all.

Rather than using all this mumbo-jumbo and crazy lingo, companies should just let us see comments from their happy customers.

This is known as “social proof” and it’s a whole lot more powerful (and believable) that telling us that you’ve done an independent study.

When I used to own the cleaning business, I always took photos of my happy clients, as well as - before and after photos of the work we did for them. I’d then ask the client to write about their experience with my company, in their own words.

I then used all of these materials when presenting my services to future prospects.

And let me tell you, that was some SERIOUS “social proof”! Those before and after photos always had a major WOW effect on anyone I showed them to.

There was no disputing the photos. They told the story for me.

And…

The photos allowed me to sell a whole lot more of my cleaning services (and at higher prices I might add).

Once I showed a prospective client the photos, they were sold. I hardly had to say a word.

Hmmmm.

There’s a great marketing lesson in there somewhere.

But let me get back on track here, because there’s a major point I want to make.

Let me remind you of the quote from the marketing piece.

Here it is:

“According to a recent independent study, our search engine converts prospects to customers at a rate that is 57% higher than Google and 48% higher than Yahoo”

Here’s what really irritates me about this comment.

These guys are trying to make us believe that their product (which is a pay-per-click search engine), will actually provide better results (and make more sales) than Google or Yahoo.

And that my friend, is a complete and utter lie.

If you’re not a very good marketer, and you don’t know how to position your product in a way that makes people beat a path to your door, with money in hand, ready to buy what you have to offer, it doesn’t matter where you put your ad.

It ain’t gonna work anywhere!

Not on Google, not on Yahoo, and not on this search engine (name withheld to protect the not so innocent) either.

As a small business owner, it’s up to you to position your product or service in a way that automatically attracts prospects to you, who already want what you have to offer.

The key words in that last sentence are “already want”.

By doing so, it virtually eliminates the need for cold calling or face-to-face selling.

You let your system do all the prospecting and selling for you… automatically.

This frees up your time to do the more enjoyable things in life, like spending time with your family or taking a vacation.

# posted by Medical Information : 2:54 AM